Cahiers de recherche

This paper discusses the legal implications deriving from the choice of an interinstitutional agreement to regulate interest representation activities in the European Union. In particular, it focuses on whether this instrument may validly allow the European Parliament to impose a set of requirements on its Members (in relation to their free and independent mandate), the political groups, the intergroups and other informal groupings of Members, and on the accredited parliamentary assistants (APAs). It concludes that, given its legal status, the proposed IIA operationalises rather than extending the existing transparency obligations stemming from the Treaty and its requirements are proportionate to the aims pursued. As such it does not affect the free and independent mandate of Members as it is defined in the Members’ Statute nor it conflicts with the prerogatives of other internal actors. The proposed IIA intends to develop and complement obligations of primary law, such as the duty of openness and transparency that already govern the Statute and its interpretation, without compromising the substantive rights and obligations provided by the former. These obligations of primary law already put limits on the freedom and the independence of the Members enshrined in Article 2 (1) of the Statute as well as that of other internal actors. Additionally, the proposed mandatory Transparency Register also allows Members to easily identify the identity of interest representatives they meet, thus enhancing the Member’s ability to inform themselves.

Problem definition: Process innovation is commonly claimed to be a major source of competitive advantage for firms. Despite this perceived influence it has received substantially less attention than product innovation and much uncertainty remains about its true association with firm performance. We investigate the relationship between a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm's process-innovation portfolio and its economic performance.Academic/Practical relevance: Our study uniquely conducts a multi-dimensional evaluation of a firm's portfolio of process innovations at the product level. This allows a quantitative evaluation of both the relative benefit of the different dimensions of a portfolio as well as the potential complementarities between these.Methodology: Through a collaboration with expert patent attorneys we develop a unique longitudinal dataset that combines secondary data and evaluations of a firm's portfolio of process patents along three key dimensions: novelty, scope, and locus. We conduct econometric analyses for a large-scale sample of drugs open to competition from generics, where process innovation is the main source of competitive advantage.Results: We find a positive association between overall process innovation and firm performance. When differentiating between dimensions of process innovation, results further suggest that high novelty is beneficial, and complemented by a broad scope, but only for patents applying to the later phase of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.Managerial Implications: Our results provide important practical insights that can inform process-related R&D investments in the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, it may not be economically beneficial to invest in high-novelty process innovations in early production stages, which are characterized by numerous opportunities to innovate with potentially higher but less predictable economic payoffs. On the other hand, at later stages of the production process, where the opportunities to innovate are less numerous with potentially lower but more predictable economic payoffs, portfolios that are jointly characterized by high novelty and high scope could be more valuable.

Problem definition: Contrary to classic applications of matching theory, in most contemporary on-demand service platforms, matches can not be enforced because workers are flexible – they choose their tasks. Such flexibility makes it difficult to manage workers while keeping customers satisfied. We build a framework to compare platform matching policies with less flexible and more flexible workers, and empirically quantify by how much worker flexibility hurts customer satisfaction and customer equity.Academic/Practical relevance: In academic literature, there is no established framework that allows for the comparison of matching policies in on-demand platforms. Further, the link between worker flexibility and customer satisfaction is understudied.Methodology: We propose a tripartite framework for empirical evaluation and comparison of the operational policies with different degrees of worker flexibility. Step 1: Predictive modeling of customer satisfaction based on estimation of individual unobservable characteristics: customer difficulty and worker ability (item-response theory model). Step 2: Evaluation of the effect of matching policy (under a given level of flexibility) on customer satisfaction (bipartite matching). Step 3: Quantification of the associated monetary impact (customer lifetime value model).Results: We apply our framework to the dataset of one of the world's largest on-demand platforms for residential cleanings. We find that customer difficulty and cleaner ability are good predictors of customer satisfaction. Granting full flexibility to workers reduces customer satisfaction by 3% and customer lifetime revenue by 0.2%. We propose a family of matching policies that provide sufficient flexibility to workers, while alleviating 75% of the detrimental effect of worker flexibility on customer satisfaction.Managerial implications: Our results suggest that, in platforms with flexible workforce, the presence of worker and customer heterogeneity reduces customer satisfaction through matching inefficiency. Our empirical framework helps practitioners to decide on the right level of worker flexibility and the means for achieving it.

We examine the impact of a new mobile-based, dockless bike-sharing service on public transportation. In contrast to traditional rental bikes that are parked at fixed stations, the dockless bikes can be picked up and returned at literally anywhere. This dockless feature of the shared bikes likely provides a solution to the last mile problem, potentially making it a complement to public transportation. Assembling a unique panel data of shared-bike rides and subway traffic, we estimate the relationship between shared-bike ridership and public transportation. Our results show that increases in shared-bike rides lead to increases in subway traffic. This positive effect is stronger for peak hours during weekdays and non-peak hours during weekends. We argue this effect is most likely driven by shared bikes promoting public transportation use and substituting for private cars (substitution effect) and also stimulating new travel (stimulating effect). Overall, we find that dockless shared bikes, in contrast to most of the other sharing economy phenomenon, acts as a complement rather than a substitute for public transportation. In addition, increased use of dockless shared bikes has a positive societal impact, leading to less urban congestion and better environmental protection.

This paper studies the investment decisions and price impact of non-resident foreigners in the Paris housing market, employing unique micro-level transaction data over the period 1992–2016. We find that these “out-of-country” buyers generally purchase relatively small but high-quality properties in desirable neighborhoods and in areas with high ratios of compatriots. Ceteris paribus, they pay higher prices, hold for longer, and realize lower capital gains, highlighting the importance of information asymmetries and search costs in residential real estate. Crucially, however, out-of-country buyers’ quality-controlled purchase prices are also positively affected by home-country economic conditions, which suggests that global variation in the willingness-to-pay for real estate affects pricing in hotspots such as Paris. When instrumenting out-of-country demand, we find that it has pushed up prices of ex ante less valuable properties that have nonetheless been exposed to such demand.

I study the real effects a contracting innovation that suddenly made financial markets more complete: central clearing counterparties (CCPs) for derivatives. The first CCP to provide full insulation against counterparty risk was created in Le Havre (France) in 1882, in the coffee futures market. Using triple difference-in-differences estimation, I show that central clearing changed the geography of trade flows Europe-wide, to the benefit of Le Havre. Inspecting the mechanism using trader-level data, I show that the CCP was instrumental both to mitigate adverse selection issues and to solve a ``missing market'' problem. Increased risk-sharing possibilities enabled more gains from trade to be realized. The successful contractual innovation quickly spread to new exchanges.

The rate at which experimental studies are published in the field of strategy has steadily increased over the past few years. Still, experimental papers account for only a small fraction of strategy papers. This may not come as a surprise given the skepticism surrounding the experimental method, which is often seen as uninterested in establishing external validity, and too “micro” for a field in which the level of analysis is primarily organizational and inter-organizational. Is this skepticism founded? To what extent can experiments be a useful tool for strategy research? To answer this question, we start by examining experimental strategy papers published between 1980 and 2016. Results from the analysis alleviate doubts about the suitability of experimental methods for the study of questions of strategic interest to firms. We next discuss the main advantages associated with the use of experiments and why they make strategy an exciting field in which to be an experimentalist today.

We build a social structural model of fame, which departs from the atomistic view of prior literature where creativity is the sole driver of fame in creative markets. We test the model in a significant empirical context: 90 pioneers of the early 20th century (1910–25) abstract art movement. We find that an artist in a brokerage rather than a closure position was likely to become more famous. This effect was not, however, associated with the artist’s creativity, which we measured using both objective computational methods and subjective expert evaluations, and which was not itself related to fame. Rather than creativity, brokerage networks were associated with cosmopolitan identities—broker’s alters were likely to differ more from each other’s nationalities--and this was the key social-structural driver of fame.

Recent contributions in the domains of governance and regulation elucidate the importance of rule-intermediation (RI), the role that organizations adopt to bridge actors playing regulatory or “rule-making” (RM) roles, and those adopting target or “rule-taking” (RT) roles. Intermediation not only enables diffusion and translation of regulatory norms, but also allows for the representation of different actors in policy-making arenas. While prior studies have explored the roles that such RIs adopt to facilitate their intermediation functions, we have yet to consider how field-level structuring processes influence (and are influenced by) the various and changing roles adopted by RIs. In this study, we focus on the mutually constitutive relations between field-level change processes and the evolving roles of RIs by studying the rise of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives/Local Governments for Sustainability), an RI serving as a bridge for sustainable urban development policies between the United Nations and urban authorities. Using ICLEI as an illustrate case, we theorize four different processes of regulatory field consolidation and fragmentation including: problematization, role specialization, marketization and orchestrated decentralization. We discuss their implications for the RI roles in the field and further theorize the changing dynamics of trickle-up intermediation processes as an RI gains power and influence.